In this section:

Social Media

Submission Rules

TECS only accepts papers in electronic form. Before submission, please make sure that the document meets the requirements as described below. Otherwise, the document may be rejected without undergoing the review process.

Author Representations Policy

Authors submitting articles for peer-review to ACM must make certain representations. These representations are as follows.

That the paper submitted is original, that the listed authors are the creators of the work, that each author is aware of the submission and that they are listed as an author, and that the paper is an honest representation of the underlying work.

That the work submitted is not currently under review at any other publication venue, and that it will not be submitted to another venue unless it has been rejected or withdrawn from this venue.

That they have the rights and intent to publish the work in the venue to which it is submitted, if the work is accepted. For conference papers, this includes the expected ability and intent to have an author of the paper register for and attend the conference to present the paper, if required.

That any prior publications on which this work is based are documented appropriately in the paper and/or in a cover letter available to reviewers. This documentation includes providing an explanation of the incremental contribution of a journal paper that extends prior results published in a conference paper. (In cases of double-blind review, this information should be supplied to the editor or program chair only.)

In cases where an author feels a particular representation cannot be made by but that submission is appropriate, the author should contact the editor or program chair prior to submission to discuss the situation and determine whether submission will be permitted. For more details of this policy please visit http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/author_representations.

Create an ORCID ID

ORCID provides an identifier that distinguishes the researcher. During registration of the author's account on Manuscript Central, the author will be asked to enter their ORCID ID. This is where the author must insert the ORCID ID.

Publication Page Limits

Ensure that the page limit does not exceed 25 pages. Please note that the page limit is fixed by ACM Headquarters. Hence, buying of additional pages is not possible, and papers longer than 25 pages will be rejected without going through the review process.

Language Services

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services, and also has significant international outreach, especially in China. Editing is available for both Word and LaTeX files. As an ACM author, you will receive a generous discount on ISE editing services.

PDF Proof

In Manuscript Central, ensure that the submission is "PDF proof". Only PDF proof papers can be downloaded and properly viewed. This requires that no security settings are set, and no type 3 fonts are used. Otherwise the paper cannot be downloaded, and subsequently it will be rejected.

Author's Cover Letter

If you provide a cover letter, then insert it in the field "Author's Cover Letter:" instead of uploading a separate file.

Review Process

We strive to return a review result within six months of submission. We believe that this interval is long enough to ensure quality reviews but short enough to be fair to authors. Since the reviews are done by volunteers, the review process takes sometimes more time. Authors should direct their questions about the review process to the Assistant to Editor-in-chief or to the corresponding Guest Editor if you have submitted to a special issue.

A revised submission should include responses to the reviewers' comments after the body of the revised paper. A good format is to list for each reviewer a summary of each comment followed by your response.

Submitting a revision

Put the Comments To Reviewers directly in the field "Author's Response" instead of uploading a separate file. Only there can reviewers read your response to the reviewers comments.

Post Acceptance

Once your submission is accepted for publication, you will receive an email with information regarding the final production process. You will be asked to submit the following through your Author Center in Manuscript Central.

Name and address of contact author, including email address and phone number; paper number and title.

PDF or PostScript file of final version.

Formatted source file (see How to Submit). Problems and help request regarding the LaTeX-Style should be adressed to ACM TeX Support. Please use for TECS the Small Standard Format.

High resolution figures in .jpg, .png, .tif, or .eps format.

Computing Classification Systems terms. An important aspect of preparing your paper for publication by ACM Press is to provide the proper indexing and retrieval information from the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS). This is beneficial to you because accurate categorization provides the reader with quick content reference, facilitating the search for related literature, as well as searches for your work in ACM's Digital Library and on other online resources. Please read the HOW TO CLASSIFY WORKS USING ACM'S COMPUTING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM for instructions on how to classify your document using the 2012 ACM Computing Classification System and insert the index terms into your LaTeX or Microsoft Word source file.

Item 1 can be included as a separate file (plain text or PDF preferred) in the publication packet. The electronic files should be included in a zip file. Please name your packet with your submission number including revision number. Please also mention the name of the Special Issue, if your contribution is meant for a special issue. If your publication packet is larger than 35 megabyte, please contact the Assistant to Editor-in-Chief who will give you a link for uploading your publication packet.

Your zipped files should not be unpacked. Upload a zipped file in the File Upload section and select the “Supplemental File” designation. UPLOAD ONLY YOUR FINAL PUBLICATION FILES INCLUDING ANY SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL (MOVIES, VIDEOS, ONLINE APPENDIXES, ETC.). If you have an updated file, please delete the original version and upload the revision. If a supplemental file exceeds 100MB, load it into a separate zip. (After uploading, designate the order in which your files appear using the drop-down menu in the "order" column. Click on PDF to view your paper, then click "Save and Continue.")

Kindly submit the publication packet within one month after notice of acceptance

Please remember to:

Include all electronic files in one compressed file (zip files only)

Name your packet with your submission number including revision (e.g. TECS-802701-9999.R4.zip)

Mention the title of the special issue, if your paper is accepted for a special issue.

The Assistant/Editor in Chief sends your publication packet to the ACM production team. The publication date depends on the total publication flow and is not a guaranteed date.

Supplemental Online-only Material

Please provide a brief description of your supplementary online-only material (i.e., text and multimedia material) to be published in the Digital Library. A short “readme.txt” file will appear in the DL along with your supplementary material describing its content and whatever requirements there are for using it.

Copyrighted Material

If you have material owned by a third party, you must secure permission for its use before publication can proceed. If this is the case, please carefully read the guidelines, and:

Obtain written permissions from the copyright holders.

Add the appropriate attributions to the figure captions in your paper (giving credit to the copyright holder).

Include the source of the third-party material in the references.

All author rights forms are now filled electronically through the ACM e-Rights Transfer Application, see the Author Rights section below.

Prior to publication, you will receive author proofs from the production manager. Once your manuscript is published, we recommend that you use the newly launched ACM Author-Izer service, see below.

Author Rights

Working with the computing community, ACM leadership has responded to calls to make scholarly articles more openly accessible, to enable authors to exercise greater control of their published works, and to comply with the increasing demands placed on authors by funding agencies.

ACM authors now have three ways to manage their publication rights with ACM:

A license granting ACM non-exclusive permission to publish—by choosing to pay for perpetual open access from the ACM Digital Library, authors may opt to self-manage all rights to their work.

A new Publishing License Agreement granting ACM exclusive publication rights—in choosing this license authors grant ACM the right to serve as the exclusive publisher of their work and to manage ongoing rights and permissions associated with the work, including the right to defend it against improper use by third parties. This exclusive license is roughly the equivalent of ACM’s traditional Copyright Transfer Agreement except that the author continues to hold copyright.

Author-izer

Once your manuscript is published, we recommend that you use the newly launched ACM Author-Izer service. This service allows you to generate and post a link on your home page or institutional repository to your published article. This link will let any visitors to your personal bibliography pages download the definitive version of the articles for free from the ACM DL. These downloads will be recorded as part of your DL usage statistics. A detailed description of the service and instructions for its use may be found at: http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service.

For further assistance

Questions regarding editorial review process should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

Questions regarding the post-acceptance production process should be addressed to the ACM Journals Manager, Laura A. Lander.